No doubt we’ve heard from our grandparents how television appartently makes us stupid. Enter Facebook, the latest scorn to our intellgence. A study from Ohio State University of 219 students gauged their school performance against their Facebook usage.

While 79 percent of students expressly denied that Facebook was interfering with studying, there may have been some tangental evidence it does. Users of the site generally studied less (1-5 hours a week), and averaged GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5. However those that didn’t use Facebook studied more (11-15 hours), and had GPAs above 3.5.

Call me crazy, but researchers may have only found the obvious: the more you study, the better grades you’ll get. But continuing on…

“There’s a disconnect between students’ claim that Facebook use doesn’t impact their studies, and our finding showing they had lower grades and spent less time studying,” co-author of the study and a doctoral student Aryn Kapinski said of the study.

Kapinski and crew also found that students were less likely to use Facebook if they had a job, and more likely to if they participated in extracurricular activities.

Science, technology, engineering, math and business majors were most likely to use the service above other discliplines.

4 Comments For This Post

I don’t see how they reached the apparent conclusion that Facebook is the CAUSE of weak study and work habits rather than the result. More likely: “People with poor study and work habits spend more time on social media.” And yeah, “Duh.”

I just wonder why more people don’t realize what Facebook means in terms of social engineering based hacker attacks (how many people use their children or family names as passwords) and how 20-somethings are going to regret some of their web disclosures in 20 years time (just as 20-somethings have always done).